[Deathstorm V2]

Originally posted by Lynx
Hi!:)

I think the cloak should function only for certain amount of time, then the fighter drops out of cloak because the energy reserves are depleted, and the cloak's energy has to reload slowly, like the gun energy or the afterburner.

Sounds a bit Starlancery to me.

The partial decloak on weapon/burner usage sounds like a good idea - far less annoying that a total decloak.

I think Nuke had the speed issue right though, going too fast should also decloak you.

[Mav]

Your ideas sound good for FS, but please also think of TCs. What I'm thinking of here is the Dragon in WC4 for example.
I think everything should be controlled by the ships.tbl as follows:

.
.
.
$cloakdevice YES
+cloaklimit YES ;; if the ship cloaks only for limited time
+cloaktime 50 ;; max time ship is cloaked in seconds
+cloakreload 20 ;; cloaking device reload time in seconds
+cloakfireprim YES ;; if ship can fire primaries while cloaked
+cloakfiresec YES ;; if ship can fire secondaries while cloaked
// +cloakfiretert YES ;; if ship can fire tertiaries while cloaked //only if tertiary weapons are added
+cloakshields 10 ;; percentage of normal shields that works while cloaked (might be above 100 ?)
+recloaktime 0.1 ;; in seconds
+recloaksound cloak.wav ;; obvious
+recloakeffect recloak.pcx ;; effect for recloaking
+decloaktime 0.2 ;; in seconds
+decloaksound decloak.wav ;; obvious
+decloakeffect decloak.pcx ;; effect for decloaking
+cloakedeffect cloaked.pcx ;; effect for being cloaked
+cloakedsound cloaked.wav ;; sound if cloaked ship passes near the player
.
.
.

And additional fields for your other features

[Mav]

Alternatively you could replace the time-limit with a cloakenergy-storage as well as use- and reload-rates and a specified minimum that's needed for the device to be activated again.
Also, you could specify velocity/acceleration limits for the device to work and such.
That way everything would stay moddable.

[Galemp]

There's more to coding, Mav, then just making up what the finished table entry should look like.

[Nuke]

thats true, freespace's code made my brain hurt. that is why i dont code for the scp. but his idea is good, dont hardcode all the details of cloaking.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

I think we should go half-half here on how to handle the cloaking the device - ships with the cloaking device get an additioanl HUD gauge and an additional system they can transfer energy to. The amount of energy assigned to the cloak system determines how fast it recharges - the effect of transferring energy would have to be pretty significant since the idea would be that a ship could permanently cloak by putting a lot of power into the cloaking system, or cloak for only a short period of time by putting less power in - conversely having more for its weapons, engines and shields however.

[NecroBob]

second to ships.tbl control, maybe also with a field that if you go over a certain speed (or percentage, depending on the ship), your emissions can be easily detected by enemy radar?

also, has anyone but me considered how silly the word "cloak" sounds????  it's an odd word...  oh well

[karajorma]

it's all well and good talking about how to handle the player side of cloaking but unless we sort out what the AI does when it encounters a cloaked ship it's pretty worthless. At the moment cloaking is just stealth by another name. It's either on or off.
 Is anyone actually looking at the AI with a view to changing an enemy ships actions around a cloaked or partially cloaked ship? What happens if the mission designer wants to say a ship can be found despite the cloak (as happens to every single cloaked vessel that goes up against a federation ship ).

It's just that I'd hate to see everyone get all worked up about how cloaking should work and then find out no one understands the AI enough to actually change anything beyond having it on or off.

[Nuke]

also awacs ships should be able to light up the radar signature of a cloaked ship, revealing a blinking dot. when you cloase in on the dot and come within about 300 meters from the cloaked ship, your sensors could do a slow scan and eventually narrow down on the location of the ship. a large targeting box would apear, and would slowly shrink down on the enemy ship untill it's location is identified. letting the ship get too far away makes you loos its location, requiring a new wide angle scan.

[Drew]

y dont you make a awaks like ship that can cloak\decloak ships around it? that kinda gets rid of the idea "as ship that small cant have cloaking device"
it would get rid of the energy problem so you could fire and use afterburners.......

ofc im not talking about eleminating individual cloak but i like JC dentons idea......

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Sounds like an idea I posted ages ago about putting in support for ships with wide-area shield generators that projected in one direction, so you could have a counter to long range capship beams and long-range bombing. I liked it mostly for the idea of having fighters fighting along the shield perimeter, so part of the strategy would be weaving between the two sides of it.

[Blitzerland]

Originally posted by Mav
Alternatively you could replace the time-limit with a cloakenergy-storage as well as use- and reload-rates and a specified minimum that's needed for the device to be activated again.
Also, you could specify velocity/acceleration limits for the device to work and such.
That way everything would stay moddable.

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